My discussions with DC have ended, clearly you all see how this played out in the end. We did our best to state our case for getting the domain, as many of you have noticed, we have a valid use for it, and probably some ICANN protections from someone else buying it just to resell it. DC did acknowledge, but could not explain, the irregularities we saw from our end during the action, an example is the following (shown as copied data rather than a screenshot as I can't post links here, those of you who also participated in this auction can go look for yourself):
FastCars P $5,706.00 Mar 2 13:03:51
420domains $5,656.00 Mar 2 13:03:5
FastCars High Bid P $5,406.00 Mar 2 13:01:20
FastCars P $5,606.00 Mar 2 13:01:49
420domains $5,556.00 Mar 2 13:01:49
You will see not only does the unexplainable "High Bid" show up, but also the bids are recorded out of order. My Proxy Bid at the amount of $5,406.00 should have shown immediately earlier in the timeline of bids, but instead it shows up 4 rows higher than it should have been recorded. We did our own analysis of the irregularities that is more thorough than this example, but I doubt we will post that stuff on the Internet.
DC says they have verified everything on their end over and over and the back end functioned as it should. I don't have proof of this, but at the same time, I don't really have rights to that nor do I want to fight it.
While true, that I kept bidding on the site even after I felt I should have won, I did so primarily to buy DC time to respond to my phone calls and emailed complaints, as leaving the auction early would have resulted in the loss of the site right away. I quit because of the ballooned price, and the weirdness of the entire thing, just didn't feel like a fair auction.
However, in the end, 420 did pay for the site, that means that 420 wanted it more than I, and that is how auctions work. It was a massively frustrating experience for me, but that's just how things go. DC did respond a lot to me after the fact, and I believe those guys feel this was all proper on their end. Simple truth is that even if they opted to redo the auction, if 420 was really willing to pay 40k+ for it, he was going to win in the end no matter what. So I have nothing really to complain about here. Had I walked away after seeing the message that I had won, and lost as a direct result of that message, things would be different, but that's not in the end the reason I lost. 420 was legit and wanted that domain.
I hope 420 has a legitimate use for it.